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Solid waste ripping people off
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Editor, Manteca Bulletin,
Thanks for the trash talk article.
Besides increasing the fees for residential dumpsters by 400%, and increasing the cost of a second green waste container from ‘free’ to $115 for a one time collection which is insane considering that a pick-up truck load of trash (considerably larger than a green waste container) to the Lovelace Transfer Station costs $16, the Solid Waste Division has increased their hidden fines for overloading a dumpster or including restricted items dramatically. They have also increased the curbside pick-up of an old appliance from $5 to $11 and change to over $55 currently.
If you go to the Solid Waste Division website and read their vision statement, they promote “unsurpassed and exceptional customer service”. They say that “this work group functions interactively with our customers to remove all permissible waste and achieve this community’s responsibility towards conserving resources”.
They also claim that they “focus on effective and efficient waste removal and diversion while providing quality servic  to our customers”.
They apparently have revised their vision statement to ignore conserving the community’s personal resources by turning the community into a cash cow to increase their own resources. Instead of helping the community to dispose of their trash, the Solid Waste Division and City Hall have decided to turn the Solid Waste Division into a profit center to fill the City’s coffers. It seems to me that the Solid Waste Division has changed their goal from “removing all permissible waste” to removing as much cash as possible from their customer’s wallets. It isn’t as if a resident of the city can go to another competing waste service, so they do have us over a barrel, so to speak.
Getting rid of garbage, trash, and green waste isn’t an ‘option’.  You can’t hide just t under the bed. Eventually, it has to go somewhere. The City and the Solid Waste Division should, as their vision statement claims, be our partners in this effort, not an organization determined to rip us off just because we have no alternative, other than dumping our garbage illegally. If the City is hurting for money, they should have the guts to go after the developers, not the hard working residents and tax payers of the city of Manteca.

Stephen Breacain
Manteca